Political correctness, politeness, and the Persianate concept of "adab"

I've got another article in Slate. I argue that Americans fear so-called "political correctness" because they imagine it as a system of thought control that harshly punishes people who get their words wrong. In fact, the idea behind what I would instead call "inclusive language" because that's a more neutral term is that if you want to be polite you have to learn about people's preferences in communication and so get to know who they are. Showing this kind of respect is an affirmation that the people having the conversation are part of the same community, e.g. a nation. Because I couldn't help myself, I brought in the Persianate idea of adab ("good manners"), which has at its core the idea that respectful words and deeds are important because they connect everyone in society.

Eighteenth-century Hindi sayings

In a post on the British Library's Asian and African Studies blog, I discussed a Persian dictionary by the eighteenth-century bureaucrat and connoisseur Ānand Rām Mukhliṣ. The dictionary, Mirʾāt al-iṣt̤ilāḥ (ʻMirror of Expressionsʼ) completed in 1158/1745, is a strange work because it's less a dictionary and more a miscellany describing people and things that interested its author. At the end of each chapter, it gives some Persian sayings [muḥāwārāt] sometimes with Hindi equivalents. 

I quoted one of my favourites, dar jang ḥalvā bakhsh nimīkunand [During war they don't hand out sweets], which is rendered in Hindi as laṛāʾī meṁ koʾī laḍḍū nahīṁ baṭte. It's a charming example in part because Persianate halwa has been replaced by Indian laddus. People asked for more examples of Hindi sayings quoted in the text, so here are few:

My Delhi book is out

My new book, Delhi: Pages from a Forgotten History, is out from Hay House India:

The megacity that is today’s Delhi is built upon thick layers of history. For a millennium, Delhi has been at the crossroads of trade, culture, and politics. The stories of its buildings and great historical personalities have been told many times, but this book approaches the past of India’s capital through its literary culture. By focusing on writers and thinkers, we meet a colourful cast of characters only glancingly mentioned in political histories.

Many Delhiites are surprised to learn that the language of their city’s cultural heyday was Persian. Despite first being brought to India by invaders, it eventually became an authentically Indian language used in both administration and literature. Although it was cultivated by an elite, it was also a widely available language of aspiration and opportunity, like English today. It connected India to the wider world, and the Indian Subcontinent, particularly Delhi, was once a place where talented poets and scholars from the whole Persian cultural world – from Turkey to eastern China – came to make their fortunes. Its traces remain everywhere but Persian is effectively a dead language in India today.

Scroll.in ran an excerpt from chapter two on same-sex love in Persian literature.

Purchase information:

The publisher's page for the book is here. It is for sale on Amazon.in and Flipkart.com, and in some bookshops. It is not unfortunately yet available outside of India. You can now get it shipped outside of India at Abebooks.com or Abebooks.co.uk, or from DK Agencies.

Plane Language

Air travel is now unpleasant in so many ways that you can hardly list them. In economy class, the romance has been drained out of the experience by a couple of decades of cost-cutting. The horror has a precise starting date, according to The New York Times, and it’s earlier than you might think:

“Industry experts trace the problem back to 1987, when American Airlines removed a single olive from its salads to save a little money.”

I take the comedian Louis C.K.’s point that we complain too much about air travel, which is really a marvel if you think about it (“you’re sitting in a chair in the sky”). The one indignity that I’m becoming less and less tolerant of is the language of the airport and the skies. Lots of communication happens—from the fine print telling us whether our tickets are refundable to the flight attendant’s cheery “would you like a beverage, sir?”—but very little at a human level. The language used by airlines and the Transportation Security Administration is often distorted, plastic, unidiomatic, excessive and generally frustrating.